Page 5 of Mended Hearts

Instant karma. This was my punishment for making him squirm discussing menses, wasn’t it?

My mouth dried out as he loaded a plate with all my favorites. For Pete’s sake. Someone explain to me why working tendons are a turn-on.

I’d just forced a swallow, diverting my eyes from Oliver Hart arm porn to the television, when he spoke.

“I never understand why girls say that.”

“Hmm?” I hummed stupidly.

“Unexpected? Isn’t it monthly?”

“You’ll notice that wasn’t an option in my previous vernacular.”

“Twenty-eight days, right? That’s what Carly’s was like.”

Her name hung like a curse word in the air between us.

I rushed to take the offered plate for something to do with my hands other than miming a felony.

“Yeah, not for me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I have PCOS, so that bitch kinda just shows up whenever the hell she feels like it.”

“What?”

“Poly—you know what, never mind. It’s a hormone disorder. Makes my cycles a form of torture and completely irregular. Some are twenty-eight days, the next will be ninety. No point tracking. I even had ovarian cysts burst when I was in college. That was hell.”

“Ovarian... I’m so glad I’m male.”

I snorted, snatching the chopsticks he held out.

He had no idea.

The incident with the cysts bursting resulted in an emergency surgery due to internal bleeding—they flew me from Mistyvale to Anchorage in the only medical helicopter on the island.

I was a junior in college for that fiasco.

Combined with my extensive medical history, it came with a horrid prognosis.

Permanent birth control,my little brother had said, like it was a perk, when the doctors told me I wouldn’t ever conceive.

He didn’t mean to be a dick—he was just a dopey teenager in the fuck-anything-that-moved stage, and didn’t think about what that prognosis meant to a twenty-year-old woman who’d always wanted a house full of kids.

Not willing to open that can of worms, I just said, “You can say that again.”

“I’m terrified of all this stuff for Mattie.”

“She’ll figure it out. Mine are extra shitty, but I’ve got a protocol now.”

“Can you work?”

“I usually call in sick.”

“And they allow it?”

“Allow it?” I scoffed, glaring his way as I hit play on the television. “Not much of a choice when I’m curled in a ball puking from the pain.”

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